Anyone that knows me, knows that I love red-tailed hawks. I think they are beautiful and majestic and just bad ass. When I took a wildlife photography course at GSSM, I got to "hold" a red-tailed hawk at a falconry meet. Her name was Zoe and I am pretty sure she could have gouged out my eyes in about 3 seconds. Well, today the Wilson5 had our 2nd wildlife experience while geocaching and it involved a red-tailed hawk. We were headed down a trail headed towards the Forest Hills Shoals cache (GC1BYRY), when Justin suddenly yelled for Alden to stop! Immediately, I am looking for snakes since we were right beside a creek and the weather was warm but not too hot or perhaps that bear that was spotted in Boiling Springs had somehow high tailed it to the southside of Spartanburg. Then, I saw It. A red-tailed hawk was sitting a few feet off the trail giving us the evil eye. Seriously. It looked at us and we looked it, and it looked at us and did not blink. I am telling you- the freaking bird had the look like it could pick all of us up in its 75 foot long talons and carry us to a nest and feed us to the babies. No joke. Since the behavior seemed weird to me (I remember a little bit of bird behavior from Dr. Bill's ornithology class even though its been 11 years since I took it), I couldn't figure out what to do. Should we chance the utter devastation that would hit if that bird attacked? Turn tail and head back to the car? Was the bird a robotic decoy set out by a hunter to play with the minds of unsuspecting geocachers and have a good laugh? Justin decided to be brave and take a chance of walking past the bird on the trail- now keep in mind that Eleanor is riding on his back so I imagine the bird grabbing her by the shoulders and flying off (picture the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz). As Justin walked by the bird, the bird slowly turned its head and followed Justin's progress. So we retreated, took some pics as proof, and decided not to take the chance of becoming prey today. As we started to head back down the trail, Justin took a small branch and tossed it towards the bird (not at it, just in front of it) and the bird extended its wings but didn't move otherwise. At that point, our decision was made. We'll just head back another day and hope that we don't have to have a stand down with another wild animal again.
